FYI, 2526 and Moo2 were both 'open space', merely 'enhanced' with wormhole connections.  Sword of the Stars has starlanes for one species, artificially generated starlanes for another, and open space (of various types) for the rest of the races.

Personally, I prefer star-lane oriented approaches; they provide chokepoints and make interesting tactical decisions a necessity.  Edit:  That said, SOTS 'limited range, with the ability to extend via tankers' makes a nice middle ground; the enemy generally can't penetrate deep into your empire without weakening his combat forces in favor of support ships.

SotS does not have starlanes, other than for 2 of the races.  SotS actually has 6! different movement systems, though 2 are very similar (humans and Zuul), 3 are related (Tarka, Liir, and Moriggi) and the Hivers use gate ships to instantly jump their ships from system to system (though they move very slowly to new systems without Gates installed).

I prefer star lanes generally, though the SotS system is also very interesting, and it does indeed provide an additional challenge when you know that your opponent has more movement options than do you (especially true if playing Human/Zuul).

Ron-

Realize that at a certain tech level penetrating deep into a system is not an issue due to refinery ships, however, ships still have a range limit, to overcome it, EACH ship in the fleet needs to have the extended range mission section which does indeed largely destroy their offensive capacity.

My biggest problem had more to do with tying UI functionality into research, which really ticks me off.

Behold!  The new armored fist of SolForce in SotS2:

*yawn* Not particularly impressive unless you are very primitive.

Holy shit that looks great Sparda! Wow I also missed this too. 

Whiskey- Primitive... how?!

@Sparda- ST "saucer" ships are noob dinner plates.

I prefer the elegant, skyscraper-internal, fusion powered vessel complete with a derivative of the Bussard Ramjet.

@GJ- the entire design is completely imbalanced and probably has the internal arrangement of a passenger airplane. Thus, while under acceleration everyone will be turned into a delicious-looking tomato-like paste against the wall that is in the direction of the propulsion systems.

This is the advantage of a skyscraper arrangement- the human body can take acceleration better when the direction of said acceleration is moving from the top of the head to the feet. The next best position is to lie on one's back and face towards the direction of acceleration.

Rhino=pwnage.

Razorback=ultra pwnage

Predator=turbo pwnage

Land Raider=uber pwnage

Sorry. Couldn't resist the '40k notation of "Rhino".

Speaking of 40k, any new DRW40K comics come out?

Starlanes are far easier to code an AI for.  That's a directed graph.  There's a whole library of algorithms (e.g. mincut, random walk, partitioning) already researched and developed for directed graphs, and the subject of white papers, articles in ACM, doctoral dissertations, etc..    To do open space, an MSCS postgraduate would probably formulate starlanes dynamically out of open space and incorporate in some fuzzy logic.    Much easier if it's just starlanes to start with.  Of course, this presumes that you have postgraduates coding the AI for games, which does not usually seem to be the case. 

That said, I tend to prefer open space as a player.  I probably would as an AI coder, too--I want the challenge.  No fun in coding algorithms that have already been done.

Friggin' HILARIOUS!!!

Also, it seems that every thread that you, me, and/or someone else who's into 40k/DoW1 seems to have a little Warhammer 40,000 sprinkled in.

That is pretty funny. If only Soulstorm could have been developed by Relic instead of outsourcing to Ironlore. Then it would be at least as good as Winter Assault (DC is probably the best one IMO).

Moving back on topic-

My ideal space 4X game would be an RT4X (like Sins ), have a highly realistic spaceflight model, have a separation of entities (frigates and capital ships, a la Sins) with larger, more important entities capable of "leveling up" (also a la Sins of a Solar Empire), and also being able to have targetable subsystems/realistic battle damage effects (this wouldn't be done for less important units because it would probably be 1) annoying/infuriating/frustating and 2) bog down system resources); it would have a starlane style system for connecting solar systems and within said solar systems it would be an open-space design.

This satisfies the fact that I absolutely would LOVE to experience an open-space system (with orbiting planets!), and the fact that I like the tactical/strategic options of starlane-style travel. I just want those options on a larger, interstellar scale instead of a small interplanetary scale.

I didn't really like the SotS demo. The UI was to cramped and uncomfortable for me to use, and it was just overall difficult for me to enjoy. I will say that it is an innovative design, but I just don't really like it very much.